About the Authors
Lisa Jackson is the New York Times bestselling author of mysteries, romance, and romantic suspense novels. More than sixty of her books have been published and reprinted in a twenty foreign languages.
John Sandford is the pseudonym for the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Camp. He is the author of more than thirty Prey novels, as well as novels in the Kidd series and the Virgil Flowers series, among other books.
Kathy Reichs is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of many novels, including the Virals series and the Temperance Brennan series. She is a forensic anthropologist and a producer of Fox Television’s longest running scripted drama, Bones, which was based on her work and her novels. Visit her at KathyReichs.com or follow her on Twitter @KathyReichs
C. J. Box is the New York Times bestselling author of the Joe Pickett series, six stand-alone novels, the Cody Hoyt series, the Cassie Dewell series, and a story collection. He has won the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, Gumshoe, and Barry Awards, as well as the French Prix Calibre .38, and the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Award for fiction. He has also been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His novels have been translated into twenty-seven languages. A Wyoming native, he has worked on a ranch and as a small-town newspaper reporter and editor. He is an executive producer of ABC TV’s Big Sky, which is based on his Cody Hoyt/Cassie Dewell novels, as well as executive producer of the upcoming Joe Pickett television series for Paramount TV.
Michael Koryta is the New York Times bestselling author of twelve novels, most recently Rise the Dark. His previous novels—including Last Words, Those Who Wish Me Dead, and So Cold The River—were New York Times notable books, national bestsellers, and have been nominated for numerous awards, including having won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Koryta is a former private investigator and newspaper reporter. He lives in Bloomington, Indiana, and Camden, Maine.
Andrew Gross is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Blue Zone and The Dark Tide and coauthor with James Patterson of five number-one bestsellers. He has degrees from Middlebury College and Columbia University and lives in Westchester County, New York, with his wife Lynn. They have three children.
Karin Slaughter is the New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author of over a dozen thrillers, including the Will Trent and Grant County series. A longtime resident of Atlanta, she splits her time between the kitchen and the living room.
Diana Gabaldon is the beloved author of the New York Times bestselling novels in the Outlander series. She is a recipient of the RT Award for Best Innovative Historical Romance.
Gayle Lynds is the bestselling, award-winning author of several international espionage thrillers, including Masquerade, The Last Spymaster, and The Book of Spies. A member of the Association for Intelligence Officers, she is cofounder (with David Morrell) of the International Thriller Writers. She lives in Westbrook, Maine.
Lara Adrian is
the author of the Midnight Breed series. Her new releases regularly appear on key
bestseller lists including the New York Times, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and
Amazon.com. There are more than two million copies of the Midnight Breed series in print in the United States. She lives with her husband in New England.
Lisa Scottoline is the author of numerous New York Times bestsellers. She has won an Edgar® Award and Cosmopolitan magazine’s “Fun Fearless Fiction” Award, and she is the president of Mystery Writers of America. She teaches a course on justice and fiction at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, her alma mater. There are thirty million copies of her books in print, and she has been published in over thirty-five countries.
Christopher Rice published his bestselling debut novel, A Density of Souls, when he was twenty-two. By thirty, Rice had published four New York Times bestsellers, received a Lambda Literary Award, and been declared one of People magazine’s “Sexiest Men Alive.” The son of legendary author Anne Rice, he has published short fiction in the anthologies Thriller and Los Angeles Noir. His writing has been featured in the Advocate, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and on Salon.com. With his friend and cohost Eric Shaw Quinn, Rice recently launched his own internet radio broadcast, The Dinner Party Show. He also recently served on the board of directors of the West Hollywood Library Fund, which helped to secure funds for a new state-of-the-art library in the heart of the city he now calls home.
David Morrell is one of America’s most popular and acclaimed storytellers, with more than eighteen million copies of his books in print. His thrillers have been translated into twenty-two languages and turned into record-breaking films and top-rated television miniseries. His 1972 debut novel, First Blood, became the basis for the Rambo films. A former professor of American literature at the University of Iowa, he now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Nelson Richard DeMille, a #1 New York Times bestselling author, was born in New York City. He was a first lieutenant in the United States Army (1966–69) and saw action as an infantry platoon leader with the First Cavalry Division in Vietnam. His first major novel, By the Rivers of Babylon, is still in print, as are all his succeeding novels. He attended Hofstra University, where he received a degree in political science and history. He is the author of By the Rivers of Babylon, Cathedral, The Talbot Odyssey, Word of Honor, The Charm School, The Gold Coast, The General’s Daughter, Spencerville, Plum Island, The Lion’s Game, Up Country, The Gate House, Night Fall, Wild Fire, and The Lion. He also coauthored Mayday with Thomas Block and has contributed short stories, book reviews, and articles to magazines and newspapers. A member of the Authors Guild, the Mystery Writers of America, and American Mensa, he holds honorary doctorates from Hofstra University, Long Island University, and Dowling College.
Val McDermid is an author whose bestselling novels have won the Los Angeles Times Book of the Year Award, and the Crime Writers' Association's Gold Dagger and Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for outstanding achievement. She is also a multiple finalist for the Edgar Award, including for the true crime nominee Forensics. Her novels have been translated into forty languages and have sold over 16 million copies. Visit her online at ValMcDermid.com.
Eric Van Lustbader is the author of more than twenty-five bestselling novels, including New York Times bestsellers The Ninja and The Testament. His novels have been translated into over twenty languages. He has also written several novels in Robert Ludlum’s highly successful Bourne series, including The Bourne Legacy, The Bourne Betrayal, The Bourne Sanction, and others. Before turning to writing full-time, he enjoyed a highly successful career in the New York City public school system, where he holds licenses in both elementary and early childhood education.
Peter James is the international bestselling author of the Roy Grace series with more than thirteen million copies sold all over the world. His novels have been translated into thirty-four languages and three have been filmed. All his novels reflect his deep interest in the world of the police, with whom he does in-depth research. He lives in England.
Charlaine Harris is a New York Times bestselling author who has written four series and two stand-alone novels, in addition to numerous short stories, novellas, and graphic novels cowritten with Christopher Golden. Her Sookie Stackhouse books have appeared in twenty-five different languages and on many bestseller lists and are the basis of the HBO series True Blood.
J. A. Jance is the New York Times bestselling author of the Ali Reynolds series, the J. P. Beaumont series, the Joanna Brady series, and a number of novels featuring the Walker family. Before becoming an author, she worked as a librarian and teacher on a Native American reservation.
Sandra Brown is the author of more than sixty New York Times bestsellers, of which five have made the number one spot. There are more than eighty million copies of her books in print, and her work has been translated into thirty-four languages. Visit her at www.SandraBrown.net.
Lee Child is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Jack Reacher series and the complete Jack Reacher story collection, No Middle Name. Foreign rights in the Reacher series have sold in one hundred territories. Two blockbusting Jack Reacher movies have been made so far, based on his novels. He is the recipient of many awards, including the CWA’s Diamond Dagger for a writer of an outstanding body of crime fiction, the International Thriller Writers’ ThrillerMaster, and the Theakstons Old Peculier Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction Award. He is a native of England and a former television director.
Steve Berry is the New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author of seventeen Cotton Malone and four stand-alone novels, among other books and works of short fiction. He has twenty-five million books in print, translated into forty languages. He is an emeritus member of the Smithsonian Libraries Advisory Board and a founding member of International Thriller Writers. With his wife, Elizabeth, he is the founder of History Matters, which is dedicated to historical preservation.
Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) was born in Odense, Denmark, the son of a poor shoemaker and a washerwoman. As a young teenager, he became quite well known in Odense as a reciter of drama and as a singer. When he was fourteen, he set off for the capital, Copenhagen, determined to become a national success on the stage. He failed miserably, but made some influential friends in the capital who got him into school to remedy his lack of proper education. In 1829 his first book was published. After that, books came out at regular intervals. His stories began to be translated into English as early as 1846. Since then, numerous editions, and more recently Hollywood songs and Disney cartoons, have helped to ensure the continuing popularity of the stories in the English-speaking world.
About the Narrators
Dennis Boutsikaris is a two-time OBIE award winner. He has received five Audie Awards and seven Golden Earphone Awards for his work in over 100 audiobooks and was voted one of the Best Voices of the Year by AudioFile magazine. He has appeared in numerous Broadway, television, and film roles. He played Mozart on Broadway in Amadeus and has appeared on television shows including Shameless, The Good Wife, House M.D., Grey’s Anatomy, ER, and Law & Order.
Gerard Doyle, a seasoned audio narrator, he has been awarded dozens of AudioFile Earphones Awards, was named a Best Voice in Young Adult Fiction in 2008, and won the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. He was born of Irish parents and raised and educated in England. In Great Britain he has enjoyed an extensive career in both television and repertory theater and toured nationally and internationally with the English Shakespeare Company. He has appeared in London’s West End in the gritty musical The Hired Man. In America he has appeared on Broadway in The Weir and on television in New York Undercover and Law & Order. He has taught drama at Ross School for the several years.
January LaVoy, winner of numerous awards for narration, was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine in 2019. She is an American actress best known for her character Noelle Ortiz on the ABC daytime drama One Life to Live. In addition to working extensively in narration and television, including roles on Law & Order and All My Children, she has worked on and off Broadway as well as in regional theater.
Jay O. Sanders began his acting career off-Broadway in Shakespearean roles then went on to appear in numerous films and television series, including Revolutionary Road, The Day after Tomorrow, and Kiss the Girls, based on the novel by James Patterson. He has narrated more than fifty audio books over the years, including the bestselling My Losing Season by Pat Conroy and Dean Koontz’s Dragon Tears and Mr. Murder. He also won six AudioFile Earphones Awards.
Karen Ziemba is an Earphones Award-winning narrator and a Tony Award-winning actor, singer, and dancer. In 2000 she received the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress, along with the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards, starring in Susan Stroman and John Weidman’s hit musical Contact. She also starred as “Roxie Hart” in Chicago and “Rita Racine” in Steel Pier, for which she received her first Tony award nomination as well as Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations. She is also active on tours to American cities and has made appearances in television series dramas.
Linda Emond is an award-winning actress of stage, film, television, and audiobook narration. Her performances on Broadway earned her nominations for the Tony Award in 2003 and 2012 and for the Drama Desk Award in 1997 and 2002. She was awarded the Joseph Jefferson Award for her roles in plays at theaters in Chicago. Her film credits include roles in Julie & Julia, Dark Water, and Across the Universe, among others. Her television credits include such series as Elementary, The Good Wife, and Law & Order: SVU, as well as movies such as A Dog Named Christmas. She has narrated dozens of audiobooks, winning four Earphones Awards and being named a finalist four times for the prestigious Audie Award. In 2011 she was named by AudioFile magazine as a Best Voice in Mystery & Suspense for her reading of Flash and Bones.
Robert Petkoff is an actor and audiobook narrator who has won a prestigious Audie Award and multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards. He has appeared on Chappelle’s Show, Law & Order, and Quantum Leap. His Broadway credits include Sir Robin in Spamalot, Perchik in Fiddler on the Roof, and Tateh in Ragtime.
Laura Benati is a voice talent and audiobook narrator.
James Langton, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, trained as an actor at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and later as a musician at the Guildhall School in London. He has worked in radio, film, and television, also appearing in theater in England and on Broadway. He is also a professional musician who led the internationally renowned Pasadena Roof Orchestra from 1996 to 2002.